For the most part, super heroes are dumb. Maybe not Bat Man,
but in order to move the plot along, super heroes have to do stupid things. It
adds to the adventure, it ups the stakes and it forces the bad guy to change
his/her devious scheme. I guess there is some sort of correlation between
abject stupidity and courageousness. Like the hero is going to save the world
so hard, he/she doesn’t care about his/her own life.
That being said, the Champions are filled with some very dumb
heroes.
Black Goliath is at the bottom of the Champions Tower where
he sees the skies exploding in a Kirby Crackle. Since he’s a black guy first
and a brilliant scientist second, writer Bill Mantlo has him exclaim, “Holeee
CRUD!” as he stares up at the building. He climbs up the building hoping to
save his friends, but he gets sucked into a vortex. He doesn’t meet his
teammates, but he happens upon the Stranger who is trying to hold the world
together so that the Null-Life Bomb doesn’t explode.
Where are the Champions? In the realm of a blind guy named
Kamo Tharn. He tangled with Hercules before and is still pissed at him because
Herc, Thor and Thor’s Asgard girlfriend Sif stole his Runestaff. The Runestaff
is what the Stranger needs to defuse the Null-Life Bomb. The Champions were
sent to this hell scape to get the staff, but guess what? Hercules remembers
that it’s back on Earth.
(D’oh!)
Kamo, Kamo, Kamo Chameleon is happy that he doesn’t have to
hunt Hercules down and kill him (he was totally about to do that, you guys), so
he sends a bunch of monkey men to fight the Scion of Zeus and the rest of the
Champions. The battle is a typical super hero battle with mindless drones. It
looks like the good guys are going to lose, but then they rally to win. The one
cool part of the fight is that a monkey man has Ghost Rider by the waist. Instead
of trying to turn around and punch the creature, Ghost Rider tilts his head
back and with his flaming skull sets the monkey dude on fire.
I’ve never seen that before.
New best friend, Darkstar, realizes that these monkey men
aren’t ever going to stop coming. Every time a Champion kicks their ass, she
says 12 new ones pop up. She notices that there’s a sliver of a portal and
using her darkfield power opens it up. She hops out, hoping that this is the
way home.
Ice Man, aka Bobby Drake, has barely spoken to Darkstar but
he LOVES her. He knows in his heart that Darkstar is the girl for him and makes
this creepily obvious to everyone at the most inopportune time. BTW, Darkstar
has not given him the time of day. Ever. She barely responds to him. Remember
how Jessica Lovejoy (played by Meryl Streep!) reacted to Bart when Bart had a
crush on her in the Simpsons episode, “Bart’s Girlfriend”? “I think I’m going
to stand over there.” That’s how Darkstar treats Bobby. Except worse.
He’s in the middle of fighting monkey dudes and freaks the
fuck out when Darkstar goes into the rift. “Something’s got her – but it keeps
her only over Ice Man’s dead body!” He has no clue what he’s doing, but he
jumps in right after her. Because he loves her. Or wants to fuck her. Or wants
to settle down and have DarkIce babies (which sounds like a beer that came out
in the 90s).
Guess where he ends up? Outer space. Like hey, Jupiter is
over there and here comes Mars right now! You want to know what there isn’t a
lot of in space? Air, yes. Of course. But also, there’s not a lot of water
either. So in order for Bobby to survive, he syphons the water of his own body
and creates a sphere to protect him. Only now he’s totally dehydrated.
You know what sucks even worse? Darkstar has no idea he’s
there. She’s in her own sphere and it’s probably not slowly killing her. Guess
what, Ice Man? Women don’t always need a guy’s help. They can do pretty much
anything they want by themselves. So you pretty much have killed yourself because
you’re a sexist pig who thinks that woman are made to be saved.
Spoiler alert: Ice man wins the gold for doing the dumbest
thing in this issue. But coming in second, is Black Goliath who is talking with
the Stranger and he says, “Anybody just try smashing this thing?”
He’s talking about the Null-Life Bomb. Yeah, just smash that
bomb. That’s how people usually defuse all types of bombs, science guy. Instead
of exploding, the NLB has a security system robot that protects it. It beats
the crap out of Black Goliath. I guess nobody is smashing anything.
The remaining four Champions are in Kamo’s world looking for
a way home. Ghost Rider says to Black Widow what we were all thinking, in
regards to his frosty teammate, “But Drake may just have killed himself by following
her (Darkstar), a defector! Stupid!”
First off, Ghost Rider sounds like a Donald Trump tweet. If
Trump didn’t obviously love Russians. Secondly, Black Widow is also a defector.
Remember that adventure that you and your teammates went on a few issues back?
It was all about Black Widow and the guy who trained her? That’s not a good
look to have, dude.
Anyway, they fight their way through the land but each
Champion thinks that his/her teammate died. Turns out they didn’t, it just
looked like they did. I didn’t really understand this at all. It was kind of
just a hand-wavey thing. Yeah, yeah, they’re fine. Totally fine.
But in a very unhand-wavey thing, the Angel goes shithouse on
Kamo Tharn and kicks the ever-loving crap out of him. He grabs him by the
throat and just rains blows down upon him. Just like Frank Costanza rained
blows down on the mother who wanted the last doll in the store for her daughter
that his son George wanted. That vicious beat-down begat Festivus. This
beat-down just allowed the Angel to beat the piss out of a blind guy.
While this is going on, it turns out Darkstar was right;
that rift led them through space and her and Bobby end up at the feet of the
Stranger. Again she totally ignores Ice Man, which makes him whine, “Can hardly
… move! Feel like I’ve been through a wringer! Laynia (Darkstar)? Laynia! You’re
not even listening I – I came after you – risked my life – and you act like you don’t even care!!”
A few things: no one asked you to go after her, Bobby. She
was perfectly fine without you. Secondly, she has an idea for stopping the
Null-Life Bomb, sorry that she hasn’t dropped everything to give you a thank
you handie so you can feel better for yourself. Jesus, he’s fucking pathetic.
Darkstar tells the Stranger that if they can find the
Runestaff of Kamo Tharn, the Stranger could run his power through her to make
the bomb grow larger and larger. Which sounds crazy, but if the bomb grows
smaller, it explodes. But if it keeps exponentially growing larger, the bomb
will short circuit. Which, okay. Seems like a logical solution.
Do you know where the Runestaff is? Of course, you don’t. It
was in the broom closet of a New York City hospital. Of course, it is.
(Right next to the mops!)
That’s where everyone keeps these things. To make an awfully
long story short, the Champions win the day.
A couple of things:
- Dave Cockrum does another great job on the cover. Aside from the first page of dialogue, Mantlo did a nice job with the script too. It was a weird issue. I like weird.
- The one thing that people hold against John Byrne is that he appears to not like drawing background at all. I never really understood that charge, because I never noticed it. But holy shit, is it evident here. These guys are fighting on a white background more than half the time. They look good, but it’s not that detailed.
- For a hero whose introduction way back in X-Men 1 was putting snow on a piece of pie and calling it “pie a la mode”, Bobby Drake did an incredibly dumb thing in this issue. If he had died, that would have been fitting. You could even chisel his epitaph on his grave, “He Died, Like He Lived: Stupidly. And He Also Thought Snow Tasted Like Vanilla Ice Cream.”
All-in-all: three out of five vested Angels.
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